David Wise takes a practice run in the super pipe Thursday during Winter X Games 2012 at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen. ESPN is capturing the action on 42 3-D cameras — the network’s first event using all 3-D cameras. AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post

ASPEN — The two men toggle knobs and click keyboards, their eyes hidden behind awkward glasses as they stare at a bank of flickering screens.

“Whoa, little hot on 6!” one yells across the trailer to nine technicians wedged shoulder to shoulder, tweaking an endless stream of images from the Winter X Games venue.

“Sorry, sorry,” comes the response as the white-washed, 3-D image of a skier comes into clearer focus as he soars off a jump and — seemingly — into the trailer.

ESPN is splashing the spectacle of Winter X in 3-D this year, capturing the winter circus on 34 3-D cameras and eight robotic 3-D cameras, all united with 37 miles of fiber cable crisscrossing Buttermilk ski area.

“This is the biggest we’ve ever done,” said Paul DiPietro, coordinating director for ESPN, a leader in 3-D programming. Still, this Winter X — Sunday will be the network’s 204th event captured and broadcast using 3-D cameras — is the network’s first event using all 3-D cameras.

“We are starting at 8,000 feet, going up to 10,000 feet. In the middle of winter. On the side of a mountain,” DiPietro said. “We are not in a basketball arena at 72 degrees. It’s a huge, huge endeavor, but that’s what we love about X Games.”

3-D TVs haven’t lived up to the hype they generated when introduced in 2010, though sales are climbing. Industry experts expected 20 million to 25 million to sell last year, but the technology often is an add-on feature to existing models and many consumers haven’t yet adopted it.

ESPN 3-D is available to ESPN subscribers who have 3-D TV sets.

In Aspen, more than 400 ESPN workers — about half of the network’s entire X Games staff — labor in the technology division, capturing and processing the signal from the army of 3-D cameras in a live presentation. The mission began a month ago, when ESPN took over the entire slopeside Inn at Aspen and built something as technologically capable as the network’s vast headquarters in Connecticut.

The hotel — its floors lined with plastic, its ballrooms divided into dozens of offices packed with on-site servers capable of storing 18,000 hours of video — is a technological wonder. It’s got to be, with the workload nearly doubled moving from standard or high definition to 3-D.

The process requires not just specially trained cameramen, but trailers of computerized experts adjusting the images in a process called convergence, which essentially does the brain’s work of depth perception.

“We have to be real careful because we are trying to duplicate a brain and eyes,” said DiPietro, noting how a wrong tweak can send viewers reeling with distorted views.

The result is a jaw-dropping, dodge-the-spinning-skier-in-the-living-room viewing experience.

“That’s ESPN. We love to innovate. It’s in our genes,” DiPietro said. “We don’t wait for the next guy, we just kind of do it.”

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills and is just as inspired by the lively entrepreneurial spirit that permeates Colorado's high country communities as he is by the views.

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”